Hell's Highwaymen

by Phillip Granath

  “Well I appreciate you lot not leaving me there,” Oliver said.

  “Well you can buy the first round,” Jamie said with a grin.

  “Speaking of refreshment, any more like these around?” he said gesturing to the downed man with his boot.

  “Got another hiding in the store and he’s got a pistol nearly as big as he is. Luckily, he doesn't seem to know how to use it. I’m also betting he doesn't know that his bullets are going to reappear just given a little time. Another pair over by that car thing,” Cort replied.

  Jerry looked over and saw the car just where they had left it. The old woman seemingly still locked inside while her fat son cowered behind it. Father Callahan stood near them and seemed to be reading to them from his bible. Though Jerry immediately wondered if the words of comfort were intended to console or just to keep them from running off.

  The pounding of hooves announced Shinji’s return a moment before the warrior came thundering around the gas station. He was shouting and gesturing at the horizon wildly.

  “olgoi-khorkhoi!, olgoi-khorkhoi!, olgoi-khorkhoi!” the warrior yelled.

  All eyes went to the horizon, there a wide cloud of dust had formed, something was quickly moving in their direction.

  “Fuck me!” Cort shouted, “Mount up, mount up, we’re fucking leaving!”

  It wasn’t the words that forced Jerry to tear his eyes from the approaching cloud and desperately look around for a free horse; it was the edge of fear in the Lieutenant’s voice.

  Hounds of Hell

  Father Callahan appeared at Jerry’s side and offering him a hand pulled him onto the back of his horse. Needing no further encouragement, Oliver bent down and scooped up the wounded Jamie in a flurry of curses. He tossed the gunslinger on to the back of his horse and then ran to find his own. The priest kicked his horse into a run, and the men galloped away from the gas station trailing after Shinji and the Lieutenant. Oliver and then Jamie followed close behind them, the gunfighter still clutching his wounded leg.

  As their horses ran past the wrecked car, Jerry saw Dale and his Mother watching the approaching cloud. Jerry followed their gaze and found he could just make outriders in the midst of the swirling dust. A half a dozen dark shapes were closing on the gas station at an incredible speed, but somehow, they seemed, well just wrong. There was something off about their size and the way that each of the shapes moved. Not riders he realized, each was larger than a man on horseback, and no two were alike. Each moving differently than the next, some with long powerful strides and others with an unnatural overly quick pace as if propelled by, extra sets of legs? Not trusting his eyes Jerry turned away shaking his head as if to free himself of what he had just seen.

  “It’s best not to look,” Father Callahan called over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, now you tell me,” Jerry replied.

  The arrows that penetrated his body vanished and moments later Jimmy’s wounds closed and healed. The robber’s eyes flickered open behind the tight pantyhose, and he sat bolt upright in surprise. He racked the shotgun looking for the son of a bitch that had been shooting arrows at him, but the cowboys and their Indian friend were gone it seemed. Jimmy got to his feet warily looking around the deserted gas station. Then he noticed a cloud approaching on the horizon and squinted at it for a moment. The sound of shuffling feet behind him sent Jimmy spinning around, his shotgun raised.

  Stepping around the edge of the building was a withered-looking figure in a black jacket, its face wrapped in pantyhose. The dried corpse took a halting step forward and then another, Its unblinking eyes locked on a point on the horizon.

  “Tony? Tony is that you?” the startled robber asked.

  “What the fuck did they do to you bro?”

  A rumbling sound was starting to grow noticeably louder now, and Jimmy turned to look back at the approaching dust storm. Dark shapes began to come into view at the base of the cloud and Jimmy was almost convinced that he could just make out odd sounds over the cloud’s rumbling approach. High pitched shrieks, snarls and even laughter. He wasn’t sure where exactly he was or what was bearing down on them, but he was certain he didn’t want to find out. Jimmy’s eyes swept the area desperately and fell upon the smashed Lincoln. A man in a bright shirt was yelling at an old woman through the driver’s side window.

  “Hey, hey you, fat ass! Does that thing run?” Jimmy yelled.

  “No…no it doesn’t,” Dale yelled back and then added, “and she won’t let anyone else in anyway.”

  “You should run and hide you idiot! No one is going to hurt an old lady. Her worthless fat son on the other hand, well why not?” the old woman shouted through the glass.

  Jimmy shook his head and ran back towards the front doors of the gas station. Just before he reached the doors one of them exploded outward as a gunshot zipped past his head. The robber dropped to the ground and hurriedly crawled forward keeping under the edge of the station’s windows.

  “Don’t come in here or I’ll, I’ll, shoot again,” a shaky voice yelled.

  “Don’t fucking shoot me, that stuff earlier, that was…that was just a, a joke?” Jimmy yelled in desperation.

  “I’ve called the police! They should be here, well, anytime, any second!” the clerk added.

  As Jimmy glanced back at the dust cloud, he didn’t like what he was seeing. The figures he saw there, whatever they were, were not human. That much he could tell for sure, and that scared him somehow deeper than anything else he had seen here. The sound of their hooves and claws tearing at the ground as they raced forward nearly drowning out the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.

  “Call the cops again man, call them again!” Jimmy shouted.

  The first of the shapes broke free of the dust cloud and came into view. Jimmy’s face went pale as his mind tried to process what he saw. The beast was the size and shape of a rhino, but there was where the comparison ended. The hulking gray beast was carried forward at its incredible speed by six thick legs. Instead of a single horn on its face, it boasted a half-dozen wickedly sharp spikes that glinted like dark steel. Likewise, its body was covered in dozens of similar spikes some nearly as thick as a man’s arm.

  The beast’s small black eyes seemed to have an intelligent and wholly malevolent gleam as they locked on to Jimmy. The beast turned now charging directly for him; the ground began to tremble as it closed on the cowering man. As it neared, the monster’s lips were curling and revealing a row of impossibly sharp teeth. Over the sound of the charging feet and the pounding of his own heart, Jimmy could just make out the horrifying cry building in the beast’s throat. The thing lowered its head a dozen paces from Jimmy, and the desperate man fired his shotgun in a last feudal attempt to ward off the beast’s attack. The shot connected with the beast’s steel spiked face in a shower of sparks but the monster didn’t even slow; he may have well been firing at a runaway train. The thing’s cry seemed to shift from one of terror to a whimper, just before it struck, then Jimmy realized that the screaming was his own.

  Inside of the gas station, the terrified clerk peered around a stack of soda cases listening to the robber’s screams. The monster lowered its spiked head and charged, smashing into the front of the building. The floor shook as the glass walls shattered along the entire storefront raining shards of glass inside and out. The concrete base of the wall buckled and collapsed in at the point where the beast had struck. The clerk couldn’t see the downed man, but his screams had ended abruptly. The frightened man peeked through the cases, with his heart pounding in his ears the clerk watched as the beast raised and shook his head several times. It’s steel spiked muzzle was smeared with dark crimson blood and adorned with strips of stringy flesh. The beast rolled onto its side and back, rolling around on top of the dead man’s body and rooting through the remains like a dog in carrion. The beast seemed to have lost all interest in anything but its kill.

  Just as the clerk began to think that his tactic of hiding was about to pay off, the sec
ond beast arrived. It moved with an unnatural speed and grace, leaping through the vacant window and landing on all fours like a prowling cat. The startled clerk stumbled back and smashing into a rack of junk food and landing heavily on the linoleum floor. The beast’s head came up at the sound of the movement and smoothly rose to stand on its back feet. As the frightened man lay on the floor, he could just see the thing through a gap in the stacks of sodas as he watched the thing start to stalk forward.

  The new beast was dark and seemed to shimmer as it moved catching the light at a dozen different angles. It took the clerk a moment to realize the thing was made entirely of dark purple crystal. It was roughly human in shape but stood over eight feet tall, its head a featureless mass of crystalline shapes and angles. It had no apparent mouth, nose or even eyes. What it did have in abundance, however, was spikes. They protruded from its spine and the back of its head in a jagged array. But the most disturbing part of the creature was its hands. They were large; each sported six fingers, each one ending with an impossibly sharp point. The beast raised them now as it turned its head and seemed to look directly at his terrified prey.

  “Oh no, no, no, no,” the man mumbled to himself.

  The clerk had seen enough, he rolled onto his stomach and began to crawl down the aisle as fast as he could, batting away spilled soda cans, bags of chips and anything else that got in his way. The sound of pursuit was almost immediate as crystalline claws dug into the linoleum flooring. The fleeing man fought his way to his feet and had nearly reached the end of the aisle when the monster cleared the stack of soda cans in a single leap.

  The row of glass-fronted coolers lined the wall, and the clerk turned to his right slipping in spilled soda as he desperately tried to reach the bathroom at the end of the wall, it was the only place he could think of to hide. A split second later the beast was on him, it was like getting hit by a car, and it sent him smashing face first into the frosted glass of the cooler. One of the massive crystalline hands wrapped around the back of his skull, the incredibly long fingers nearly meeting to cover his face. The beast pressed forward, driving his head into the glass and then the clerk heard a sickening crunch. He thought he was having his skull split open; then his next breath forced dark blood out of his nose and down the front of the glass.

  The terrified man was now sobbing, and he just managed to turn his head to the side, and in response, the beast pressed harder. The glass in front of him began to crack and groan in protest. Desperately the terrified man’s eyes darted around, looking for anything that could help him. His eyes fell upon the shiny pistol, the one that he had carried to work, though the company had strictly forbidden it. The gun lay just at his feet in a pool of soda, and there was no way he could reach it; the thing may as well still have been in his sock drawer at home he realized.

  Without warning the beast spun him around, the crystal hand that had encompassed his head now shoved flat against his chest and pressing him back up against the glass. The clerk squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to awaken from what he kept praying was a just a terrible dream. Even as he hoped in vain, his body trembled, anticipating the killing blow that he was certain to land at any moment. Then that moment was joined by another and again another after that. What was it doing? Why wasn’t he dead yet? The startled clerk wondered. He took a breath steadying himself and then through the haze and pain of his broken nose the trembling clerk opened his eyes.

  The crystalline beast was still there, still towering over him. It had lowered its head, and the mass of dark crystal now hovered less than an inch away from the cowering clerk’s face. It moved its head back and forth and then up and down his body. The clerk turned his head ever so slightly his face a mix of terror and confusion as he tried to figure out what it was doing. The crystalline head snapped up and met the terrified man’s eyes or would have if the thing had eyes. The clerk looked into the mass of dark angles and saw only his reflection staring back at him, in a dark purple array of varying sizes and distorted variations. At that moment the beast seemed to have found or perhaps not found what it had been seeking. It dropped the clerk, and the man landed in a heap on the sticky floor. Without giving him a backward glance, it strode down the aisle again and was gone.

  Dale felt his fingertips crack and begin to bleed as he fought with all of his strength to force open the Lincoln’s trunk, but the wreck had warped the vehicle lid enough that all of his mother’s attempts to try and pop the trunk from inside had failed. Dale glanced around at the empty plain again in desperation, but there was nowhere else that the fat man could hide. The pain came again, and he fell forward onto the trunk lid panting hard and gripping at his chest.

  “Dale! Dale!” his mother shrieked again from inside of the car.

  The big man’s head came up, and he didn’t need to ask what she was yelling about this time. Something, some nightmare version of a Rhino was rolling around in what remained of the man in the leather jacket. The thing’s gray and steel hide was now splattered in gore, as it released a series of deep grunts. The thing made one final roll and this time managed to impale almost all of the smashed corpse upon its spikes. It then turned and with a final bellowing grunt began to race back in the direction from which it had come.

  It was just as the thing turned that Dale saw perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the bloody attack. The robber’s smashed and twisted form impaled on the beast’s back was still moving, somehow, he was still alive. The dead man’s head twitched just a bit, and his eyes fluttered open, at that moment they found Dales. The man tried to scream but only dark blood escaped his lips, and then he was gone. Carried away by the huge beast as it raced back into the cloud of dust.

  Dale whimpered in fear, his eyes had grown clouded, and he realized he was crying. He glanced up again watching as another dark and strange figure stalked into the ruined gas station. He attacked the trunk with a renewed effort first trying to pry the lid open with his bleeding fingers and then in desperation pounding on the lid with his clenched fists. The pain in his chest struck again, and he clenched at his chest with one hand and halfheartedly continued pounding with the other.

  Dale’s Mother screamed again, and Dale’s bloodshot eyes came up. Another thing had escaped the swirling dust and was now running directly towards their car. This one ran upright on a pair of long spindly legs, pumping out impossibly quick strides. From where Dale stood the thing looked like a man. It was perhaps six feet tall and clothed in a pair of worn denim overalls and a tattered plaid shirt. The thing would be on them in a matter of heartbeats.

  “Dale! Dale! Oh, my dear god! It’s Mr. Friendly!” the old woman wailed.

  “What in the fuck is a Mr. Friendly?” Dale screamed in reply.

  Then with one more desperate try Dale screamed and brought down both of his fists on top of the trunk. The metal dented in and with a pop, the lid was immediately released. The thick lid came up and caught him under the chin, Dale reeled back spitting blood and looked down into the dark space. This was his chance he realized; he could hide here, hide from whatever these things were. But a fresh round of his mother’s screams cut his plan short, and Dale released a heavy sigh.

  “I’m coming mother!” he shouted.

  The trunk was nearly empty, a tattered umbrella, a set of folding chairs leftover from some forgotten trip to the beach. He pulled these out dumping them on the dusty ground and under them found what he was looking for. He raised the shiny chrome tire iron high in triumph. It was one of the four-sided stars rather than a single straight shaft, but it was the closest thing to a weapon that he had.

  “I’m coming!” he screamed again.

  Mr. Friendly was nearly at the driver’s side door when Dale threw himself in between his Mother and the charging thing. Dale pulled the tire iron back, ready to defend himself and his mother. To his shock, the thing that his mother had referred to as Mr. Friendly stopped just short of him and Dale got his first clear look at the monster, it was some twisted form of a scarec
row he realized.

  While the beast’s torso was just as tall as a normal man, Its limbs seemed overly long, nearly spider-like. The limbs protruded out past the tattered edges of its ruined clothes and looked more like sun bleached wood in some mockery of human arms and leg bones. At each knee, elbow, and wrist they were held together by strips of mildewed leather or bits of rusty barbed wire. At the end of each arm were overly large hands that looked like a mass of creeping vines. But the most disturbing part was the thing’s head. It appeared to be a mildewed burlap sack with a jagged tear where a mouth should be and a pair of oddly shaped dark stains for eyes. The thing looked back at Dale, and its jagged mouth turned up at the ends in a hellish mockery of a smile. The smile showed Dale that black mildewed hay packed the sack head.

  Dale was trembling with fear, and suddenly the weight of tire iron in his hand felt somehow less comforting. A thought occurred to him then, he slowly lifted the tire iron and held it out in front of him, then turned it slightly, like a cross.

  “Get, get back! Get back!” he shouted at the thing and then asked lamely. “The power of Christ compels you?”

  In response, the thing lowered its head and leaned slightly to the left. For a brief moment, Dale thought that perhaps his improvised cross was having an effect. Then the things wicked smile grew even wider, and it raised its vine fingered hand to give the car behind him a little wave and Dale’s mother screamed again.

  “It can’t be! It can’t be! Mr. Friendly!” the old woman shrieked.

  The thing turned to look at Dale just then, and the man suddenly knew without a doubt that it was here for her and not him. Dale didn’t waste another moment, he whipped the tire star out aiming for the thing’s head. Mr. Friendly didn’t even flinch, and one end of the star struck the thing’s burlap head. It was like hitting a pillow and had about the same effect. The blow tore a jagged hole in the things burlap face and sent a small shower of moldy hay into the air. Mr. Friendly didn’t move at all, didn’t even twitch at the blow. As Dale watched in shock, the thing raised a hand brushed the tire iron away, knocking it free from Dale’s hand and from its face in the same motion. Then Mr. Friendly casually pushed Dale to the side as if he were a child. The big man landed on his side, sending a fresh round of pain in his chest.